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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
From operator to entrepreneur: David Garcia applies outage management lessons
David Garcia
If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.
But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.
Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.
For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”
In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.
Lorelei Commin, Siegfried Baumgärtner, Bernhard Dafferner, Silvia Heger, Michael Rieth, Anton Möslang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 131-135
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-744
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In future nuclear fusion reactors, structural materials will undergo a large thermal cycling due to pulsed operation and the occurrence of several maintenance periods. Therefore, the investigation of the combined role of creep and fatigue loading is of major importance. In this study, we focused on Eurofer 3 electron beam welds. Two different post-welding heat treatments were carried out: a two-step heat treatment (30 minutes at 980°C followed by 2 hours at 750°C) and a one-step heat treatment (2 hours at 750°C). Fatigue, creep and creep-fatigue tests were performed. A 550°C test temperature was chosen, corresponding to the upper operation temperature currently foreseen for this material. Creep-fatigue experiments were achieved by interrupting a fatigue test and then applying a creep loading until the fracture of the specimen. Several fatigue pre-stress conditions were studied. The post-weld heat treatment influence was analyzed. The damage contributions of fatigue and creep were studied using electron microscopy. The results were compared to previous results obtained on base material.
